I am a keynote speaker and communication coach for the world’s most admired brands. I am the author of seven international bestsellers including my newest book, "Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds." Learn more at www.talkliketed.com.
I also wrote "The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs" and "The Apple Experience," the first book revealing the secrets of the wildly popular Apple Store and how any brand can leverage the Apple Store lessons to improve the customer experience.
The BrightSight Group in Princeton, New Jersey, represents me as a keynote speaker worldwide. I graduated from UCLA and have a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern. I live in Pleasanton, California, with my wife and two daughters.

Presentation Skills: 5 Lessons From The BlackBerry 10 Keynote

During Super Bowl XLVII, millions of viewers got their first glimpse of the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone. Several days earlier a smaller, but influential audience of employees, customers, analysts, and reviewers saw BlackBerry president and CEO Thorsten Heins introduce two new phones (one with a touchscreen, another with traditional keyboard) at a New York City keynote presentation. The touch-screen BlackBerry Z10 has been met with generally favorable reviews. The New York Times tech reviewer David Pogue called it “lovely, fast and efficient, bristling with fresh, useful ideas.”

I watched the BlackBerry 10 keynote video this weekend and was impressed with several elements of the BlackBerry product launch. Here are five lessons all presenters can learn from the presentation.

Slide design. Traditional PowerPoint slides filled with bullet points are unofficially banned from major product launches. Regardless of the software used (PowerPoint, Apple Keynote, Prezi), visuals trump words. The BlackBerry 10 keynote was no exception. All of the slides were simple, uncluttered, and visually appealing.

The average PowerPoint slide has 40 words. The first 15 minutes of Heins’ presentation contained only about seven slides and far fewer than 40 words across all the slides. No slides had bullet points.

Lesson #1: Keep your slides simple and visual.

The rule of three. As I’ve discussed in a previous column, the rule of three is one of the most powerful tools in communications. People think in chunks of three pieces of information. If you give your audience 12 items to remember, they won’t remember a thing. Heins used the rule effectively in his keynote presentation. He described the BlackBerry Experience as “re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented.” One slide showed an image of the new phone on the right with three benefits listed on the left: Beautiful Display, 4.2” Screen, 356 PPI.

Heins also had a slide showing the three categories of customers who would benefit from the new phone. They are:

Hyper-connected socially

Have an appetite for getting things done

People who want to get the most out of their smartphone personally and professionally.

Lesson #2: Divide content into 3 digestible nuggets of information.

The 20-minute rule. In a column titled, Why a 20-minute presentation always beats a 60-minute one, I revealed the scientific reason behind keeping a presentation concise. Twenty minutes simply works better than a 60-minute presentation. The BlackBerry product launch lasted a little over one hour, but if you watch closely, it was more like three 20-minute presentations. Exactly 16 minutes after Heins took the stage, he introduced BlackBerry’s head of software portfolio, Vivek Bhardwaj for a demonstration of the new operating system. Bhardwaj’s demonstration lasted about 24 minutes.

Lesson #3: Most product pitches should last no more than 20 minutes, especially investor pitches. If you must go longer, break up the keynote into 10 to 20 minute “segments” to give your audience a break.

Share the stage. A great presentation is like a theatrical event complete with a compelling narrative, images, props (demonstrations), and a cast of characters. In addition to Bhardwaj, Heins introduced several other speakers including a surprise announcement at the end of the keynote when he introduced a new Global Creative Director to deliver the message—musician Alicia Keys. If there’s one area for improvement, I would recommend that Heins shares the stage even more. Bhardwaj was energetic, comfortable, and engaging. It would have been nice to see more of him.

Lesson #4: Show off the team for new product pitches.

Deliver a Twitter-friendly headline. Whenever a company launches a new product, I like to listen for a headline that succinctly summarizes the key benefit of the product. I heard it from Heins: “These BlackBerry 10 devices are the absolute best typing experience in the industry. Period.” This headline is only 94 characters, perfect for a Twitter post. As soon as I heard it I knew the press would pick it up. Sure enough, a Google search for the phrase returned more than 500 results.

Lesson #5: If you can’t describe the key benefit of your product in 140 characters or less, keep working on the message.

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I love “Lesson #5: If you can’t describe the key benefit of your product in 140 characters or less, keep working on the message,” not only for the visuals, but also for the spoken sentences.

I also agree with #2; however, in the slide shown, with the two guys and the written thoughts, I would prefer the photo to be on one side of the slided and the text on the other side, with a plain background. Though the text has a soft shadow which separates the text from the background photo, I believe it is a bit more difficult to view. But that’s just my personal experience. Overall, great tips.